The Nearly Impossible Juggling Act

I've never been good at juggling
projects--not with writing or house cleaning or life in general. My
brain insists that I finish one thing completely before turning to
something else.

This was a bit of a problem back when I taught
college and I was writing the early Noble Dead books. Due to the
constant mountain of grading on my desk (that had to be done), I was
only working on the books in the breaks between semesters. Seriously,
JC and I outlined Thief of Lives on a break, and I wrote the rough draft on a month-long holiday break. I didn't quite finish
before classes began, but I had a little time before assignments started
pouring it. Writing at that pace was grueling, but no matter how hard I
tried, I just couldn't seem to work on more than one major project at
once. This was an enormous, frustrating, life altering problem for me.

Years later . . . I think I'm finally getting better.

Once
I started writing The Vampire Memories series, I had to adjust my brain
to working on more than one project at once--as a Noble Dead book and a
Vampire Memories book would always be "in the works" only at different
stages (outlining or drafting or revising or copy-editing or
proofreading, etc).

This was almost impossible for me at first
(to switch gears in the middle of a novel and work on another novel),
but I started being able to do it.

Recently, JC and I started
writing short stories that we're e-publishing, and at present I'm
working on a fairly lengthy one called "The Keepers of Chemestuk Keep."
There is nothing remarkable about that unto itself . . . except that JC
and I are also working on the outline for the next Noble Dead novel.
Yesterday, he worked on the outline and I worked on that story. Today,
the outline has been passed back to me, and I'll put the story on hold
and get back to work on the outline.